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I didn't know where else to put this to be honest. It is a bit of a goodbye, but not permanently. More of a "see you in a little while." As posted on the xerjester.com home site, since I proudly mirror Nine Shot Sonata here:

((Note: If you don't care what's going on, but want to know where the comic is, just scroll down to the very last section.))

Sounds dramatic, doesn't it? It's not really. I say "fate" but what I really mean is "where things stand currently on the comic". I just think fate is a nice word. anyway…

For those of you who've been keeping up with my Facebook or Twittter, you already know the score. Feel free to let your attention wander. For those of you who haven't, it's been a hell of a week to say the least since my last newspost. My hard drive suffered a complete and total meltdown - to the point where data extraction now requires sending it off to one of those nice retrieval services that nicely charge exactly too much money.

(Note: Before you email suggestions, please understand two things.
1. I had my IT friend spend 8 hours with this drive doing everything he could think of to pull my files off.
2. I am not tech-savvy, I do not have extra money, extra computers laying around to hook up the drive to, nor do I understand the larger part of 3/4ths of the info people throw at me concerning computer hardware. I know photoshop. Moving on.)

So, because of a lack of backups, as my wife and I couldn't afford more flash drives and the like, (again, recrimination aside, we seriously could not afford backups. Have a little understanding) I've lost everything. Every. Single. File. All research on 9SS, all original comic psd's, all scripts, and every last single scrap of information/preconceptual artwork that amounted to 2 years of accumulated progress.

Yeah. It was kind of a blow ot me.

The good news is, I had enough extra pocketchange to get a new harddrive. The bad news is, I LOST EVERYTHING CONCERNING NINE SHOT SONATA.

This comic has suffered too many hiccups to begin with, and losing the entire catalogue of work on the comic was less a hiccup and more of the cold-hands-of-death-squeezing-till-something-pops. I kid, I kid. The comic isn't dead. But it *is* wounded. Some of you out there have already expressed that I can easily toss up a new page on the fly without all that back-work. You're right. I could. And it would suck. You'll forgive me if I'm not keen to pull that. I set out to make something awesome, and regardless of losing it all and obstacles piling up, I intend to do just that.

You may also remember that I've been doing commissions to pay the bills. Well there's still a few people on that list of mine, patiently waiting to get their money's worth while I deal with murphy's-law-in-the-machine. I can't keep them waiting while I try to rebuild at least enough of the work needed for the comic to go forward even with a shambling skeleton version of the comic. So. Here's what I'm going to do;

1. I'm going to take the time to get my computer together. This also means selling/pawning whatever I have to to get a new scanner (as my old one refuses to play nice with my new system), and whatever backup media I can afford to keep this from happening again. Lesson learned, via the hard way.

2. I am going to finish out the pieces on my commission list before September (barring any further acts of *insert deity of choice/random act of life here*) and make them worth the wait of everyone who's paid for one.

3. I am going to take the extra time I have between now and October to rebuild what I've lost - mainly in the scripts/recollecting research department. I will also attempt, once the commissions are complete, to get a solid buffer of completed pages done.

4. I will relaunch/return 9SS to it's fulltime gig by Halloween at latest.

I'll be leaving this page up for a while, just so latecomers can get the news. The comic's not dead. It, like it's creator, are just knocked down. I didn't hear no bell, and I'm not done. We're not done. Come fall, we'll be back on our feet and ready for another round. We always will be.

–TLDR–: Comic's not dead. Computer was. Comic will be back in October.